Thinking At A Granular Level

– By Dr Claire Bisdorff, Director of Curriculum

It is a natural tendency of school systems and routines to drift towards reduced effectiveness over time. As leaders, how can we avoid falling into passive management, instead ensuring culture, focus and alignment are maintained?

At SMMA, we do this through sustaining focus on our unique culture and ethos, and fostering a narrative of constant improvement through evaluating, rethinking, auditing and adjusting our practice.

'The SMMA Way’, the five principles which guide behaviour for learning and culture at our school, truly anchor our culture. What struck me when I joined SMMA, having been a leader in another London comprehensive school, was the extraordinary effectiveness of clear values and shared professional language. Through reiterating the vision consistently, we prevent team members from drifting into silos or apathy.

A key part to this is fostering a narrative of constant drive for improvement. We can always improve, no matter how well things may be going. It takes energy and drive to avoid a mentality of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it", but apathy is the first route to entropy. We encourage a culture of striving for better, so we can fulfil our moral mission.

Our SMMA culture of servant leadership empowers team members. It encourages autonomy and ownership in staff, which in turn boosts buy in. We embrace change, whilst holding true to our values via the ‘SMMA Way’. This means fostering a culture which actively seeks out and implements new, better ways of doing things, rather than defending the status quo. Humility is in the SMMA DNA, because it creates the right conditions for positive change. In addition, the structural leadership elements at SMMA ensure we are anti-entropic in our practice.

The first of these is regular monitoring of teaching and learning. We engage in regular developmental observations (called ‘typicality and support’ visits) to check the temperature in classrooms and spot-check teaching and learning quality. This allows us to address any issues that arise in a timely manner. We also hold whole-school observations during a fixed time period, using the expertise of our leaders and middle leaders, to help us identify areas for future development. This data then feeds into our programme for continuous professional development for our staff.

Secondly, SLT, Academic and Pastoral Board, and department and pastoral team meetings are productively used to audit the effectiveness of our systems, revisit our core principles and values regularly, and communicate and test new ideas and initiatives.

Finally, rigorous use of data analysis for improvement forms the basis of our raising achievement strategies, including a dedicated inset day early in Autumn Term, focused on helping teachers itemise their pupils’ needs and organise to ensure all pupils are on track to achieve ambitious targets.

By understanding that order is not a permanent state, we can reframe the threat of entropy as a prompt to inject new energy, focus, and innovation into our drive for improvement. At SMMA, our structures, systems and culture support the active, granular thinking required to fulfil the mission of every child in our school being ‘happy and successful’.